Neoliberal Totalitarianism

The 20th Century gave us the right-wing totalitarianism of the Nazis and the left-wing totalitarianism of the Communists. The trauma caused by these ideologies caused people to gravitate towards the centre, in the belief that this was the opposite of totalitarianism. But the 21st Century has given us a new, centrist form of totalitarianism: the neoliberal form.

Neoliberal totalitarianism announced itself last week with the unpersoning of American President Donald Trump. Trump was first banned from Twitter, and then FaceBook, and then the rest of the neoliberal establishment piled in. Within days, he was even banned from Spotify.

The tech tyrants justified this by saying that Trump had violated the terms and conditions of the respective websites. But Twitter continues to host representatives of ISIS – who have been described as “winning the social media war” – as well as supporters of the Chinese Communist Party who argue in favour of concentration camps, and people sharing videos celebrating the Charlie Hebdo murders.

Nazi totalitarianism sought to control everyone’s lives down to the minutest detail, and was willing to destroy anyone who resisted. Communist totalitarianism also sought to control everyone’s lives down to the minutest detail, and was also willing to destroy anyone who resisted. The rhetoric that these forces used may have been different, but fundamentally both were authoritarian movements.

Neoliberal totalitarianism is just as bad. Like Nazism and Communism, it seeks total control over the lives of the citizens. Much like other totalitarian systems, it involves Big Business and Big Government working together against the common person. The degree of authoritarianism is the same. As Trump learned, when the neoliberal totalitarians decide that you’re gone, you’re gone.

Neoliberal totalitarianism is much more sophisticated than either Nazism or Communism.

The crude tyrannies of the 20th Century were not at all shy about making enemies, whether external or internal. Theirs was very much a rule of iron. Dissenters were crushed, sometimes literally as in the case of Tienanmen Square. Consent was achieved through submission to fear. Secret police were an everyday menace.

The tyrannies of the 21st Century are more the rule of silver. The logic is to abnormalise violence as much as possible, with the intent of making it unthinkable for any of their victims to use it against them. Neoliberal totalitarianism achieves its power through absolute control of the media matrix.

The reason for the current purge of wrongthinkers from social media is to maintain the effectiveness of that media control.

Josef Goebbels, in his Principles of Propaganda, wrote that “Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority. It must issue all the propaganda directives. It must explain propaganda directives to important officials and maintain their morale. It must oversee other agencies’ activities which have propaganda consequences.”

This totalitarian approach was the basis of the Nazi propaganda strategy. Far from recognising the value of free speech, the Nazis banned every propaganda organ that wasn’t under their control. The Nazi Party would be the sole source of truth for the German citizenry. A similar situation arose in Communist countries.

Goebbels understood that, if all other voices were silenced, people would unquestioningly follow the narratives they were given. It was only when other voices started to question the veracity of the Nazi propaganda that it started to become less effective. So all those questioning it were silenced. Anyone pointing out how the Nazis were lying were liquidated, many in concentration camps.

Totalitarian governments attack free speech with more fervour than they attack any other freedom. This is because free speech is the basis of every other freedom. Without free speech, the other freedoms cannot be peacefully defended. The loss of free speech is therefore the breach in the dam that leads inevitably to tyranny.

The neoliberal totalitarianism of today is pushing for the same degree of central control over media content that existed in Nazi or Communist countries. They do this out of similar motivations to the Nazi and Communist totalitarians. Desiring power, and being indifferent to the suffering of the people whose freedoms would be lost, the totalitarian is happy to trade those freedoms away for more control.

The only major difference between the neoliberal totalitarians of 2020 and the Nazi/Communist totalitarians of 1940 is that today’s tyrants are more subtle. They use their total control of the apparatus of propaganda to train the citizens to police each other. They don’t need to put wrongthinkers in gulags if they can train the citizens to shun those wrongthinkers into submission.

Because the citizens themselves act as the overseers of the slave plantation, it feels like they are doing so consensually. As long as no-one questions why it is that people think they way they do, or who decided that they should think that way, the hate machine can roll onwards unimpeded. In this manner, wrongthinkers can be neutralised without provoking resistance.

Any future solution to neoliberal totalitarianism must base itself on anti-totalitarian grounds. This will require common agreement across all of left, right and centre that totalitarian measures are unacceptable. The first step might be to declare common agreement with George Washington that “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

If you enjoyed reading this essay/article, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Clown World Chronicles: Elections In Clown World

That Clown World is at the point where democracy tips over into tyranny is evident from the state of elections today. If there’s anything in today’s world that could be compared to a grotesque circus, it’s our general elections. The political world has always been like a circus, but in Clown World the circus is 24/7.

Problems with starting a democracy in places like Africa, it is said, don’t generally arise during the first election. It’s in one of the subsequent elections, when the winner of the initial election loses, that the problems start happening. It’s all well and good for one party to assume control after winning the first democratic election. What matters more, though, is what happens when they lose control and are asked to hand over power.

Characteristic of democratic elections in African scumholes is that they are contested. Almost inevitably, the loser accuses the winner of cheating, either by stuffing ballot boxes or by intimidating opposition voters into staying home. This is especially likely to be true if the loser won the previous election. It’s common for these disputes to end up in massacres or even civil wars.

Characteristic of democratic elections in the West is that the loser accepts the result. This is why it was so shocking for the 2000 American Presidential Election to drag on for as long as it did. But in Clown World, elections in the West have started to go down the African route.

The first real sign of it was the Russian interference conspiracy theory that was pushed by Democrat Party operatives in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. This conspiracy theory suggested that the election result might not have been legitimate because it was influenced by the actions of the Russian Government, who supposedly purchased enough FaceBook ads to switch the result from Clinton to Donald Trump.

At time of writing this chapter, the result of the 2020 American Presidential Election still isn’t clear. Seven weeks after the election, neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump has conceded (although the mainstream media has anointed Biden the winner). Trump has mounted a number of legal challenges relating to the vote, and rumours persist that he might try to enlist the military in a coup.

The tendency of Clown World politicians to dispute election results is made worse by the fact that the elections themselves have become detached from reality. The election process presents an image of a politician that 99.9% of voters will never meet. So it’s almost impossible to know if the results of a general election reflect the will of the country. This makes disputes much more plausible.

In Clown World, elections come down to a battle between competing narratives. Whichever narrative can assert itself the strongest wins, regardless of what any vote tally might say. Elections aren’t so much won as consent for one side’s victory is manufactured. This has made elections into permanent public relations exercises more than temporary leadership contests.

Buying media space is how positive public relations are maintained, and thereby how most elections are won. 90% of the time, the better-resourced candidate wins. This is because most voters in a democracy simply vote for the candidate with the most name recognition. If they saw Candidate A on the television and not Candidate B, that must mean that Candidate A is superior.

It’s even possible to calculate how much money you need to buy enough positive attention to win. A seat in the United States House of Representatives, for example, will cost around $1.6 million. However, it’s not always as simple as money – Michael Bloomberg spent $500 million to win the Democratic nomination for the 2020 Presidential election, and failed. Generally speaking, the lower the office the easier it can be bought.

No matter how hard it is to buy an office, though, people will always try. Because of all the mainstream media propaganda and disinformation this leads to, we still don’t know who has won the 2020 Presidential election. Faith in institutions is so low that there’s no-one we trust to tell us the definitive truth about who the President will be. FaceBook will censor anyone questioning Biden’s supposed victory, but as of right now it’s not clear that Trump intends to concede.

The great risk when elections become disputed is that it can lead to tyranny. The logic is that if the other side isn’t going to play fair, then why should we? Mistrust can escalate to the point where both sides reason that they had better get their retaliation in first. At that point, the country is essentially in a state of civil war.

Unfortunately, if the last two decades of American presidential elections are anything to go by, civil war is almost inevitable. It seems like the election results are becoming more and more heavily disputed by the loser. Trump is digging in his heels right now, and ill will is so widespread that if he called for a million Republican supporters to hit the streets with firearms he might get it.

For democratic elections to work, there has to be widespread confidence that the electoral process is legitimate. This means widespread confidence that there is no voter suppression, no foreign interference, no collusion with outside third parties and no influential disinformation campaigns. If one or more of these factors are present, the results are liable to get disputed.

It might well be that democratic elections themselves are inherently signs of Clown World. But the decay doesn’t stop at democratic elections. The predictable future is increased Weimarisation, up to the point where the system collapses or is overthrown. One possible pre-emptive solution is withdrawing the franchise from certain anti-social groups.

This article is an excerpt from Clown World Chronicles, a book about the insanity of life in the post-Industrial West. This is being compiled by Vince McLeod for an expected release in January 2021.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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Clown World Chronicles: Mass Media In Clown World

The mass media has been a part of our lives for over a century now, even longer if one considers newspaper and wireless radio. And the whole time, it’s made us more and more detached from reality. The grotesque separation from reality that characterises Clown World wouldn’t be possible without the input of the mass media.

In normal world, the mass media serves to inform. A person doesn’t have the time to research all day, so they buy a newspaper to keep them accurately informed about the issues of the moment. They can then have meaningful conversations with other people who have been likewise illumined.

In Clown World, mass media serves to regiment public opinion in favour of the globalists who own it.

The main benefit to the globalists of controlling the mass media is that they can normalise the vacuous, soulless, rootless consumerist lifestyle that generates them the most profits. It’s no accident that watching television or Hollywood films puts people in the mood to consume – they were designed to have that effect.

Globalists also use their control of the media to manufacture consent for open borders.

An image of a drowned Syrian boy on a Turkish beach was beamed into the heads of every Clown World resident in 2015. The implication was that anyone who believes in borders is a child killer. After making people too afraid to speak up in favour of their national interests, the globalists then flooded the West with Third World immigrants, further destroying wages and pumping up house prices.

Consent for open borders is also manufactured by the mass media refusing to pay due attention to crimes committed against Westerners by immigrants. Coulter’s Law states that, in the case of mass shootings, the longer the mass media takes to tell us the race of the shooter the less likely they are to be white. The general rule is that crimes committed by whites are pushed front and centre; crimes committed by non-whites are hushed up.

None of this would be a problem if people were less gullible. If people were willing to think for themselves and to question authority, the mass media would be much less dangerous. In the depths of Clown World, however, most people believe this media to be made up of objective journalists who are employed to tell the truth.

This perception is maintained by further brainwashing. Anyone who suggests that the mainstream media cannot be trusted is written off as a “conspiracy theorist”, their concern dismissed as a possible sign of paranoid schizophrenia or similar. Distrusting the mainstream media is considered a moral defect, revealing a particularly malicious kind of antisocial intent.

In Clown World logic, there’s a small step between questioning the television and shooting up your school.

In reality, the mass media is owned lock, stock and barrel by international banking and finance interests, and they hire people to produce globalist propaganda. There no objectivity in it, any more than in the media publications of North Korea. There is truth in it, but it’s merely seasoning. The propaganda is the main fare.

That is why nationalists like Donald Trump get targeted so heavily. The mass media serves as a 24/7/365 wrecking machine, tirelessly ripping down anyone the globalists decide they don’t like. Eventually the whole world realises that to stick one’s head above the parapet is to attract the machinegun fire of reputational damage.

One feature of Clown World making the mass media more dangerous is that it’s difficult to find entertainment outside of it. Back in the day, one usually had a group of friends, neighbours or workmates who entertained each other with music or games. Either that or one spent time in Nature, hiking, hunting or fishing.

In Clown World, all those needs are met by screen interaction.

In Clown World, however, the mass media offers very little by way of pure information. Everything presented in it has been designed and calculated to manufacture consent for the objectives of its owners. This effect is so profound that the mass media can be described as the apparatus of propaganda.

Whoever controls the apparatus of propaganda controls the behaviour of the populace as surely as whoever controls the mouse cursor controls what happens on the laptop screen. They simply direct the talking heads on the screen to tell the populace what other people are thinking. The people who consume this media decide that, since everyone else thinks that way, they’ll think that way too. And so entire countries are regimented.

Today’s mass media works on a dopamine cycle. People get a dopamine hit from the feeling of being in touch with the dramas of the world, and they don’t get one if they fall out of touch. It’s a thrill to see footage of foreign conflicts. It’s a thrill to hear an expert say that someone else is an idiot because they believe something false. These dopamine hits keep people coming back.

The technologically advanced nature of today’s mass media means that it’s available all the time. Many people wake up and check their phones before they even get out of bed. The average Clown World citizen is plugged into the media matrix in almost every waking moment. The result is that there’s very little possibility of original thought outside of this totalitarian brainwashing apparatus.

Overcoming the nefarious effect of the mass media on our minds and behaviour requires two major steps. The first is to “unplug from the Matrix”, which requires aggressively curating what comes to our attention. The second is to find quality alternative media sources to replace the mainstream garbage.

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Why They Stopped Pushing Class, And Started Pushing Race

Recent studies have shown that the frequency of race-baiting content in the mainstream media has increased sharply over the past decade. Terms such as “structural racism” and “racial inequality” have spiked in use. The lazy reason we’re all given is that this is a sign racial issues are finally being treated with due seriousness. The truth is much more sinister.

Many people have noticed that the mainstream media now pushes race issues at every opportunity. The major news shows now feature racial issues in almost every broadcast. Often, innocuous issues are spun to make it seem that black or brown people are being oppressed in situations when they really aren’t. Spokespeople for racial collectives are featured prominently.

The mainstream media has made it seem as if racial injustice is the single most pressing issue in all of society. With the hysteria around the George Floyd killing, it reached a truly religious fervour. This extreme attention paid to race issues, at the expense of class issues, is part of a deliberate divide-and-conquer strategy.

The simple story is that the mainstream media is owned by international banking and finance interests, and these interests control the loyalties of the ruling class of every Western nation.

The last thing those interests want is for the lower classes to unify, because if the lower classes did unify it would be against the international banking and finance interests and their lackeys. So those interests direct their employees in the mainstream media to promote racial narratives intended to set those lower classes against each other.

They know that a large proportion of the working class is non-white. By lifting that part up, and by pushing the white part down, they guarantee tension and conflict. Pushing racial consciousness ensures that the non-white working class takes an antagonistic attitudes towards white people, and consequently get rejected by the white working class.

As this column has previously pointed out, the corporate world has thrown itself in behind Black Lives Matter when they did the exact opposite for Occupy Wall Street. This is also deliberate. Although corporations act as if their support for Black Lives Matter is for purely altruistic reasons, the true reason for their support is that promoting racial narratives at the expense of class narratives serves their interests.

Simply put, race divides us more effectively than class does.

Although the white working class has no voice in today’s political scene, they are still some 35% of the population of the West. This means that the majority of poor people in every Western country are white. For these people, being told that they are privileged because of their skin colour – when still poor – is an outrage. But this idea is pushed because, not despite, that it is outrageous.

The primary consequence of pushing the lie that the white working class is privileged is discord between the white working class and the non-white working class. The more that the non-white working class is raised up above the white segment, the more hate is generated. This hate is amplified when the non-white working class is taught to regard the objections of the white working class as racist.

The result of pushing race consciousness in the mainstream media is that the working class has fallen apart. White working class people will not take the side of people who think they are racists, and non-white working class people will not take the side of people who they think are oppressors. This mutual antagonism prevents the working class from coalescing towards any common goal.

Meanwhile, the ruling class laughs, their opposition crippled by infighting.

The mainstream media has induced such an advanced state of race neurosis that many people are too afraid to discuss racial topics at all. Now we just meekly surrender while the mainstream media browbeats us into submission for the supposed crimes of our ancestors. Thanks to a decade of this psychological pressure, our minds have become warped into thinking through a racial lens.

This myopically race-based way of thinking means that class narratives are forgotten, and, with their loss, the opportunity for class-based resistance to the predations of our rulers becomes impossible.

The mainstream media will only very rarely discuss an issue from a working-class perspective, because that strengthens the enemies of their owners. Acknowledging the legitimacy of working-class consciousness is to acknowledge that the working class might have a legitimate grievance, or at least a legitimate reason to pull together. Much better to split them in two by promoting racial consciousness.

This divide and conquer strategy is used elsewhere. Western intelligence agencies use their control of media organs to sow discord in geopolitical rivals. For example, instead of speaking of China as a single unit, they will divide it into the oppressors who live urban and the oppressed who live rural. Then they push the rural narrative for the sake of promoting rural consciousness at the expense of national consciousness.

Occupy Wall Street terrified the international banking and finance interests that control the apparatus of propaganda. Those interests saw their class enemies pulling together under a common banner. Ever since then, the mainstream media has gone to extreme lengths to promote racial consciousness ahead of class consciousness. The rioting of 2020 suggests that they mostly succeeded.

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